Shut Up, We're Making Progress
The Intersectional Theory of Everything vs. the Art of Lawnmower Maintenance
No issue the progressive left claims to exist can ever be resolved because they conflate and combine every supposed issue with every other supposed issue.
Climate change includes social justice.
Child care and paid leave is infrastructure.
Highways are racist.
I call it the Intersectional Theory of Everything (ITE).
It is claiming there is a tie between things that are completely unrelated and have no causal ties whatsoever.
When you really solve problems, you whittle down the situations as you discard unrelated and superfluous charactistic to get at the real issue and deal with it.
For example, if you have ever worked on a small engine that won't start, the first things you consider are compression, air, fuel and spark. You yank the pull cord to make sure the piston is free and you can feel resistance on the compression stroke, then you take the air filter off to make sure there is no blockage, then you pull the spark plug to check for a spark, then you check the gas tank (actually, that should be the first thing you check), the fuel line and the carburetor float bowl to make sure gas is getting to the carb and the needle valve isn't stuck closed.
99% of the time, when you go through these four things, and eliminate them one at a time, you will hone in on why it won't start.
What you don't do is walk up, yank the cord one time and then step back with your hands on your hips and say the engine doesn't start because all white people are racists (that's pretty much the Reader's Digest version of CRT).
But that Monty Python/She's a Witch! process is what passes for logic and reason in Washington and in the faculty lounges at colleges today.
Another aspect of the ITE is taking a multivariate problem and deciding the issue and solution based solely on what is most politically advantageous for the examiner. Some issues are simply so vast and have so many inputs it is impossible to determine what to do. In those cases, I was always taught to break them down into the constituent parts and start defining and solving the smaller issues - again, whittling the issues down to get at Vice President Sham-ala Harris' favorite things, the root causes.
Most often this aspect is evident when politicians adopt the "We must do something!" perspective of a problem they cannot conceptualize or understand, they just want to placate some constituency and achieve or retain power. I think this is another reason why, since the election of Barack Obama in 2008, racism has become the universal reason for every issue from math to nuclear power.
I do not doubt some of these grifting imbeciles in government actually believe the moronic stuff they say. Some of them have never worked on a lawnmower engine or solved a simple problem by process of elimination. They are just disconnected from real life and only know about life through theories, not applications.
But there are those who know better and just don't give a damn.
These are the dangerous and damaging ones, the people who say things and support policies and programs that never solve anything but in reality, prevent solutions for anything - but keep the flow of chaos, and most importantly, money, going.
I’m reminded of this anecdote:
In the year 1541, a Spanish ship filled with treasure hunters sailed up the Amazon in the quest for riches. Rumors of a great golden city drove the anticipation to a fever pitch. One sailor climbed up the mast and from the crows’ nest, he could see a gleaming city in the distance, surrounded by thick, dense jungle.
After running the vessel aground and disembarking, the crew packs up, grasps their swords and sets about hacking a path to the golden city.
Three days later, they are still hacking their way through the dense foliage with little success. They haven’t reached the golden city even though, from the vessel, it appeared close. Their captain exhorts them to redouble their efforts because they only brought five days of provisions and if they don’t reach the city quickly, they will not have enough food for the return journey.
His call was met with an effort of Herculean proportions. Trees were felled, brush removed and the path grew with a speed greater than ever before. During a rest break on the fourth day, the lookout who initially spotted the golden city climbed the tallest tree next to the freshly hewn path to assess their progress – to his shock; he discovers that they are cutting a path parallel to the river and exactly 90 degrees to the golden city! They are actually moving away from the objective and he sees that they are just as far away as they were on the first day!
Since it took a long time to gain this high vantage point, the crew doesn’t wait for him to climb up to resume. They actually thought his climb was just an effort to avoid the hot and difficult work, so they end the break and resume hacking furiously at the undergrowth.
Thinking that they are almost there, the captain began yelling, "Harder, harder! Chop faster, ye bastards! Faster! We are all about to be rich beyond our wildest dreams!"
Upon reaching the apex of the tree, the lookout discovers the truth. Looking down at his fellow crew and the captain, he yells, "Mates! Stop! Stop! We are going the wrong way!"
But the crew doesn’t stop, in fact, they seem to be angered by the lookout’s discovery. If anything, they seem to pick up speed. Again the lookout cries, "Mates! Stop! Please! We are going the wrong way!"
Pointing at a right angle to their current trajectory, he screams, "The golden city and the treasure is over there!!! I can see it!"
A loud grumbling is heard from down below. The crew and captain huddle in apparent anger at the lookout’s revelation… After a few minutes, the captain looks up and yells, "You lazy fool! You only climbed up there to get out of work, now get back down here and get back to work with this crew!"
He then added, "We are making great progress!"
That last line sums up the progressive left's - and unfortunately, the government's - definition of success. It is not about achievement, it is about intentions and effort. Much like Nina Totenberg from NPR told us during the Clarence Thomas hearings, “It’s the seriousness of the charge” that matters, not the truth.
It isn’t the solving the problem that is important, it is enough to make "progress", even if the progress is false.